A yoga and meditation teacher living in Minneapolis was fatally shot by police Saturday night after she called 911 to report a possible assault in the alley behind her home.

The woman was identified by family in local and Australian news reports as 40-year-old Justine Damond (nee Justine Ruszczyk), a native Australian who studied to be a veterinarian in Sydney before moving to Minneapolis to be with her fiance, Don Damond. The couple planned to marry next month, but Justine Damond had already taken her fiance’s last name.

The call for help came in just before 11:30 p.m. Saturday, according to a news release from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Two Minneapolis Police Department officers went to an alley near her home in the Fulton neighborhood, on the city’s southwest side.

“At one point an officer fired their weapon, fatally striking a woman,” the statement said.

But the BCA offered few other details on what precipitated the shooting and, it said, neither of the responding officers had turned on their body cameras before the shooting. The squad car camera did not capture the incident either.

Investigators are looking into whether other video of the shooting exists, the BCA statement said. When the state investigation is completed, the results will be given to the office of Hennepin County Attorney Michael O. Freeman for a review of whether any charges should be filed. A spokesman for Freeman declined to comment Monday about the shooting.

Australia native Justine Damond, 40, who was set to marry her fiance in August, was fatally shot by a police officer on Saturday, July 16. Few details have been revealed about the incident. Here’s what we know. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

All Minneapolis police officers have worn body cameras since the end of 2016, according to the city, a policy decision that was announced last July, after a black motorist named Philando Castile was fatally shot by a police officer in the Twin Cities area.

“We all want to know more; I want to know more,” Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges said at a news conference Sunday afternoon. “I call on the BCA … to share as much information as they can as quickly as they possibly can.”

The mayor, who represented the Fulton area as a city council member, called the shooting a “tragic incident” and said she has questions about why the officers’ body cameras were not turned on.

“Tonight, I’m sad, and disturbed,” Hodges wrote on Facebook Sunday night. “This is a tragedy — for the family, for a neighborhood I know well, and for our whole city. … There is a long road of healing ahead, and a lot of work remains to be done. I hope to help us along that path in any way I can.

“But right now, I’m sad, disturbed, and looking for more answers, like many of you.”

Authorities told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that the officers have been placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard procedure in officer-involved shootings.

Three people “with knowledge of the incident” told the Star Tribune that the responding officers pulled into the alley behind Damond’s home. The woman, wearing pajamas, approached the driver’s side door and was talking to the driver, reported the Star Tribune. The officer in the passenger seat shot Damond through the driver’s side door, the three people told the newspaper.

“Basically, my mom’s dead because a police officer shot her for reasons I don’t know,” Zach Damond, Justine Damond’s stepson-to-be, said in a video posted to the Women’s March Minnesota Facebook page. “I demand answers. If anybody can help, just call the police and demand answers. I’m so done with all this violence.”

He added: “America sucks. These cops need to get trained differently. I need to move out of here.”

Zach Damond, the stepson of Justine Damond, speaks out about his stepmother’s shooting death by police on July 16. (Women’s March Minnesota)

Don Damond was away on a business trip when the shooting occurred. His son, Zach, said his future stepmother heard a sound in the alley so she called police “and the cops showed up.”

“She was a very passionate woman, and she probably — she thought something bad is happening,” the 22-year-old said. “Next thing I know, they take my best friend’s life.”

Another woman in the video, Bethany Bradley of Women’s March Minnesota, said police were not being transparent or sharing information with the family. She also lives in the Fulton area.

Damond’s death has become a top story in Australia, where her photo is splashed across the top of major news sites. Those same sites reported that the shooting has shocked and confused friends back home.

Alisa Monaghan, who trained with Damond in alternative therapies, said her friend moved to the United States to “follow her heart” and to find “new life,” the ABC reported.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it is providing consular assistance to Damond’s family.

In a statement released by the agency, Damond’s family in Australia said: “This is a very difficult time for our family. We are trying to come to terms with this tragedy and to understand why this has happened. We will not make any further comment or statement and ask that you respect our privacy. Thank you.”

Justine Damond attended high school in Australia and graduated from the University of Sydney with a bachelor’s of veterinary science degree in 2002, according to the ABC.

Her personal and business website says she was a qualified yoga instructor, meditation teacher and a personal health and life coach.

The website says Damond’s “interest in supporting people to heal and transform themselves developed after she saw family members suffer greatly from depression, alcoholism and cancer.”

It continued: “After losing much of her family to cancer she has spent many years on a personal investigative journey to discover how habits and disease develop, and how people can change and live in joy, expressing their full potential.”

Three mayoral candidates, Minneapolis NAACP officials and about 250 other friends, family and community members attended a vigil Sunday night where Damond was shot.

“Many of us who have been on the front lines have been warning the public, saying if they would do this to our fathers and our sons and our brothers and our sisters and our mothers, they will do it to you next,” said Nekima Levy-Pounds, one of the candidates and a civil rights attorney. “I really hope that this is a wake-up call for this community to stop allowing things to be divided on the lines of race and on the lines of socio-economic status.”

An Australia woman living in Minneapolis was fatally shot by city police on July 15. (Women’s March Minnesota)

Damond’s stepson called her a “very passionate” person. Friends and neighbors at the vigil called her a “peaceful, lovely woman” who loved animals and helping others.

“This woman was a beautiful light,” Bradley said at the vigil. “She was a healer. She was loved. And she should be alive. She should still be here.”

Damond is one of at least 524 people fatally shot by police in the United States this year, and the fifth such person in Minnesota, according to a Washington Post database tracking such deaths. Among people shot by police, she represents an outlier in at least one way: Men make up the overwhelming majority of people fatally shot by officers. Damond is at least the 23rd woman fatally shot by an officer this year, accounting for just over 4 percent of all fatal police shootings.

Damond’s death is the latest to draw scrutiny to how police officers in the Twin Cities area use deadly force.

Last year, an officer from a suburb fatally shot Philando Castile, a local school worker, during a traffic stop that was partially streamed online. Castile’s death in July 2016 set off heated demonstrations that continued for weeks. Protests flared up again last month when a jury acquitted Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who shot Castile, on all counts.

Just weeks before Castile’s death, federal authorities said they would not bring criminal charges in a November 2015 shooting involving Minneapolis police officers. Two officers fatally shot Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old, whose death sparked demonstrations. The county prosecutor announced last year that the officers would not be charged, saying that they believed he was trying to grab one of their guns.

Clark’s death prompted a wave of protests outside a Minneapolis police station, demonstrations that eventually saw a burst of violence. Gunfire near the protests injured five demonstrators in November 2015, and prosecutors charged a group of men with the shootings. Last month, two men in that case pleaded guilty, while another had been sentenced to 15 years in prison.